thank you Dale, Leo@BigD,the clay i use is mainly from Spain mainland, for the Yixing brown clay, i got from Yixing from my previous work trips in South East Asia to set set up aquaculture fish farms. I ve seen many types of clay that local people use for general ceramics in Japan, Vietnam, China, Korea, but so far I ve'nt got these types of special clays in Europe.

A 8X8X3cm pot with a primitive dragon from Han period (206 B.C) for a comission work

I mainly use this black high rire grogged body 0-0.5mm clay, at 950°C, it becomes brown, at 1280°C, it gets dark. it's specially designed for aartistic ceramics

@Keith, it's always great to work with natural clay, when it gets sticky, we put our hands in the water,then the dirtiness is gone. The sculptures will be available as soon as i can organize my work in time.

The way I create the sculpture in my bonsai studio in southern France for the time being:

I made the pot (8x8x3cm) the previous night, before creating the dragon figure, the pot is still fresh enough, to join the figure.The dragon figure was sculpted separately with another fine clay texture.I added the figure to the pot to work on the details and the pot was served as a support.

the wwork is done after 55min, the pot is to put in a dry palce for more than 2 weeks before the firing at 1280°C during 12 hours.

The clay i used: black high fire 2mm grogged body stoneware for the pot, fine dark clay for the figurine.

anyhow, thank you for leaving a comment Usually before making any sculpture, i spend a lot of time finding the real images, in case of real animals such as dogs, cats, birds.o the Internet..then, based on the visual information, i try to create the first shape of the figurine. Yes , it's difficult to deal with the proportion, scale, volume, details...before having a correct figure.